A Clearer View
by GeorgeAndrews
Summary: "Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again." - Alex Tan. My attempt at Leslie Emm's 1st person challenge with Sheldon Hawkes. (Do not read if you don't like gore).


A/N – This is my attempt at Leslie Emm's First Person Challenge. I got Sheldon Hawkes as my character, tearful as my emotion/feeling and sausages as my object.

I'd like to warn readersthat a few paragraphs of this are quite gory and were slightly influenced by James Herbert. No copyright intended to him or his excellent works.

* * *

It was somehow always on days like this one that I got stuck with Detective Flack. Not a bad fellow and excellent at his job but we just never seemed to click. I'd known him for years, two of the longest serving members on board Mac's team and yet...we'd never really hung out. I found myself disinterested in most things he had to say and he probably felt the same way about me too. Whenever we were put on cases together we always seemed to clash, differing of opinion on most things. Perhaps it had stemmed from that very first case we'd worked together where he'd reprimanded me for handing my card over to a tearful victim who had just lost her son. Heartless was a word that had sprung to mind as I'd watched Detective Flack attempt to deal with the bereft mother. But I had worked in the hospitals, seen devastation like he couldn't imagine and I'd found myself acting without thinking, only wanting to console this poor grieving woman. Sometimes the rules needed to be broken to do what was right.

Ever since that day, that case, the two of us, Detective Flack and me, had just never seen eye to eye. He berated me for my interest in medical science and I found his sarcasm and use of pun somewhat tedious. It seemed illogical to me for one to be thinking of these ridiculous remarks when something so much more serious, like a murder investigation was taking place. Danny could be the same sometimes but I spent more time with him and he was easier to read, a less uptight and more easygoing type of soul. With Danny it was our differences that enabled us to work well as a pair. Of course I'd never tell Danny of my...dislike was too strong a word, but distaste for Detective Flack, they were best friends after all. But yes, distaste was the most apt choice of word to describe my feelings for him. He'd never understood the severity of those doctors who would break the Hippocratic Oath and perform unethical medical procedures just for money. To Flack, it was all just another case.

"We're here."

Two small words spoken gruffly as the car was swung roughly to the curb and jolted to a stop in front of the small diner we sought. Gerry's Sausage Diner. Flack had barely spoken to me the entire drive across town and as I exited the car I suddenly wondered what he'd been thinking about during the journey. Perhaps similar thoughts ran through his head too about me when we worked together. I guess I would never know. I pushed thoughts of my differences to Detective Flack to the back of my head as I stared at the grubby and grey looking diner we were about to enter. Flack was already striding towards it with intent. The place looked run down, like it hadn't seen a customer in weeks. The neon sign calling the eatery a diner no longer glowed a bright colour and as I neared I could tell the windows hadn't been cleaned in months. A thick layer of grime and soot and street dust caused by the exhaustion and pollution of the city was caked to the glass making the inside look all the more dreary. Flack was already in there and I hurried in after him, almost falling as my shoes stuck to the sticky linoleum floor and suddenly halted my progress. Flack turned and smirked at me and I felt a pang of annoyance at his smug look.

A vastly overweight and dour waitress was stood behind the counter, her yellow uniform so tight I could see her rolls of flesh through the gaps of material between the buttons on the front of the tunic. Her matted and greasy looking frizzed brown hair was tied up loosely on top of her head in what looked to be a pink coloured scrunchie. I hadn't seen one of those since I was in my teens. The woman had to be in her fifties, possibly late forties and she glared at Flack as he approached her.

"Good morning, I'm looking for Gerry Grub," Flack said briskly, flashing a somewhat charming smile, for those who thought Detective Flack could be charming.

The waitress at least had the decency to glare even more at Flack, that smile wasn't fooling her and immediately I wondered if there would be trouble.

"Who. Are. You?"

The words came out from behind blackened and yellowed teeth in slow, punctuated breaths and I noticed Flack lean a little away from her face. It seemed that speaking either caused her a lot of difficulty in breathing; either that or she simply had trouble putting words together into a sentence. Either way, she did not come across as the most intelligent of women. What shocked me the most was the depth of her voice; it was startlingly low, lower than both mine and Flack's. If she hadn't been wearing the waitress' tunic and scrunchie I might even have been persuaded to believe she was a very fat man.

"I'm Detective Flack," Flack stated, smile dropping as he showed her his badge. "And this is my colleague from the CrimeLab Doctor Hawkes."

On cue I pulled aside my jacket to reveal the badge attached to the top of my black jeans as Flack and the waitress both turned their eyes on me. I could see the revulsion in Flack's face as he looked at me and although I felt guilty for making my own judgements of this poor woman, I tried not to make them obvious. Flack on the other hand was another story.

"It's a lovely place you have here," I said pleasantly, stepping towards them both, eyes never leaving the short fat woman behind the counter.

It was an obvious lie, the place was devoid of any customers and the only noise that came to our ears was the clanging of pans or machinery round the back, though as far as I could see the kitchen appeared to be empty too. My attention was drawn by movement to my left as a large cockroach ran across one of the table tops.

"We. Make. Sausages."

Once again, each word took a great effort on the part of the waitress and I briefly wondered if she might pass out from the exertion of either thinking too much or breathing not enough.

"I'll let you in on a little secret... Alice," Flack said smarmily as he eyed the name badge pinned to the lapel of her uniform. "We already know that, this place being called Gerry's Sausage Diner and all that."

Alice changed her gaze from me to Flack and at once I could tell he was pissing her off. I can't say this realisation surprised me.

"He. Ain't. Here."

The waitress, her fat body crammed into the tight uniform, sweat starting to form on her forehead and drip down the sides of her head really did make an unsightly vision and it was quite obvious to me why this place was empty.

"Then perhaps you could be so kind as to tell us where he is, or when he'll be returning," Flack replied rather shortly.

Suddenly Alice seemed to grow upwards and Flack actually took a step backwards in what seemed to me to be some sort of trepidation. It was only then that I realised she had been sitting on a stool behind the counter. The woman was humongous, large not only in breadth but in height also. She towered over Flack who wasn't exactly the shortest guy on the block himself.

"Don't. Know." she growled at Flack and I couldn't help but smirk myself as the detective was showered in spittle that emanated from her disgusting mouth. Flack instantly looked like he wanted to throw up.

"Perhaps you have a number we could contact him on?" I asked politely, coming forward and leaning against the counter top. I instantly wished I hadn't. As I pulled back a wet, sticky noise could be heard as I tugged my jacket free from the layer of... of something that had almost glued my clothing to the surface. The whole place was revolting and terribly unhygienic.

"No."

I sighed, realising this was hopeless; this woman wasn't likely to give anything away whether she knew it or not. But Flack had other plans. Irritation was fuelling his mind as he pushed me aside and leant up to meet the woman. Only one thought crossed my mind: this wouldn't end well.

"Look love, I can plain as day hear someone in the back making noise. Now I'm just having a guess here but that's probably gonna be Gerry Grub. So I'll tell ya what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna go check that out."

Before Alice could speak again Flack had darted around the counter and was striding through the open doorway into the kitchen. Unwilling to be left alone with the glaring red-faced giant I went after Flack. If only for his own safety as well.

The kitchen was empty as I had thought but the back door was open and a noise of clanking and machinery whirring came from beyond the door. Flack was through it and I hurried after him, pausing in the doorway as I took in the sight before me. It was a small factory, machines whirring around us as they processed the meat. Flesh being whizzed up into mush to make sausages with while through an open window I could hear the squealing and snorting of porkers. Clearly Gerry's Sausage Diner didn't lie when it claimed to produce its own homemade sausages. It was just unfortunate that no-one would probably ever set foot in this place to try them.

"Gerry Grub?"

I looked up to see Flack approaching a balding man in a stained white vest. Thick black hair covered his arms and poked out from the top of his vest and a cigarette hung loosely in his mouth. His large belly jutted out in front of him giving him an appearance of pregnancy and yet both Flack and I knew that the more likely cause of this was too much beer. His eyes narrowed in suspicion as we approached but he didn't stop what he was doing. One hand turning the leaver as another squashed the ground meat into the intestine skin. Occasionally some ash would drop from the butt in his mouth onto the sausages but this didn't seem to bother him. He carried on with the job in hand.

"What's it to you?"

I blew a sigh of relief, thankful that this man didn't have the same slowness of speech as Alice did.

"I'm Detective Flack and this is Doctor Hawkes from the Crimelab. We'd like a few words with you, Mr Grub."

"Can't you see I'm busy here boy?" Grub growled, showing coffee stained teeth to us.

"It'll only be a few questions and then we'll be out of your hair," I said earnestly, ignoring the fact that Flack rolled his eyes as he turned away from both me and Grub.

"Make it snappy then," Grub muttered. "Got a lot of work to do today. A lot of orders."

"Are you actually telling me people buy your sausages?" Flack asked rudely as he looked into a deep vat of what appeared to be tomato ketchup.

"What are you trying to say?" snarled Grub and I shot Flack a look. He glared back at me.

"Perhaps you could tell us where you were last night, Mr Grub?" I asked, trying to deflect the man's attention away from Flack.

Grub turned to look at me and blinked stupidly as though not understanding what I had asked him.

"Last night?" he frowned.

"Yes. A man was killed two streets away and we have reason to believe you might have had contact with him prior to his death. His name was Mick Monk," I informed him.

"Say is this ketchup?" Flack interrupted before Grub had time to answer. "You put it in your sausages?"

Flack turned just in time to see Grub move. I admit I didn't see it coming. For a man so large he moved incredibly spritely and obviously had great strength stowed away in himself. He flung the massive trail of sausages he'd been working on across at Flack and then sprinted round the table, knocking the flustered detective sidewards as he pushed past him. I chased after Grub, only briefly registering the helpless cry Flack let out as he crashed into the vast tub of ketchup, body and arms tangled in the sausages.

"NYPD, Freeze!" I yelled, knowing it was almost pointless to say that.

Fortunately stamina was not a friend of Grub's and I managed to catch up with him and swing him into a wall.

"Stop right there!" I growled as I clasped his hands behind his back and snapped on a pair of cuffs. "You're coming with us."

I frogmarched the man back the way we came and hurried to check on Flack. What I saw had my blood freeze in my veins. As if paralysed, I stared at Flack in horror. The very terror and revulsion of the sight before me seeping into my body like the ghost of another time and I shivered, my back suddenly wet with perspiration, my vision blurring as I gasped in another breath. Flack lay there in the blood, the dark red syrupy liquid pouring from his ravaged gut. Something had attacked him, had clawed at his flesh and ripped open his stomach. His belly had been split in two, the deep wound exposing the slithery innards that steamed in the open air. Flack's entrails and intestines were hanging out of the huge gash, strings of meaty insides and grey-blue tubes hanging out; twitching and wriggling as if alive, unlike the detective who once housed them. The pool of blood grew ever larger, strings of arterial veins still seeping the liquid from them. I tried to tear my eyes away from the sight of Detective Flack, from the sight of his innards pulled from his body and I turned, bile rising up from my throat and cascading down my shirt and onto my shiny black shoes and the dirty floor beneath them. I didn't understand, my back had been turned for only a moment. What could possibly have done this to Flack so quickly? What had killed and mauled my colleague?

"Hawkes! Help me!"

I turned from the pool of vomit before me to see Flack struggling with the giant woman, Alice, and he was very much alive. Grub was making a run for it out through the door to the diner, hands still cuffed behind his back. He skidded in the ketchup that now covered the ground and fell hard to the floor where he struggled to rise. I looked back towards Flack. He was once more pushed to the ground and the huge woman was bearing down over him, her intention all too clear. She was going to sit on him which would surely suffocate him if not crush him to death.

"Get the hell away from him," I yelled loudly, grasping the nearest item and swinging it hard into her head.

The hard metal pan slammed into the side of her head and she stood there, stunned for a moment and wavering slightly.

"Come on," I said in short sharp breaths, heaving Flack up from under his arms and pulling him away. Just in time. The giant lady came crashing down and the entire room shook as she landed.

"What the hell did you do to my wife?" yelled Grub angrily still struggling to get up.

"Wife?" Flack choked as he looked at me. "Poor bastard."

I couldn't help but exchange a grin with the sour faced detective.

* * *

The questioning of Gerry Grub had been exhausting as he had been more concerned with the condition of his wife than with anything either Flack or I had asked him. But eventually we had learnt the despicable pair had caused the death of Mick Monk, a financier from Wall Street who had been involved in embezzlement himself. That in itself had led us all off in the wrong direction in the first place, when the crime had really been a simple one. Poor Mr Monk had simply reported Gerry's Sausage Diner to the authorities about cleanliness and had caused it to be inspected and closed down. I let out a breath and shook my head sadly as I walked through the corridors of the precinct. I couldn't help but feel sorry for poor Mick Monk. Even though the man had been a criminal himself, he had not deserved to die for what I considered a favour to the rest of the city. It turned out he had been crushed to death by the huge Alice Grub in the hopes that using no weapon would not point to any suspect. Some people really were incredibly thick.

"Yo, Hawkes!"

I turned at the sound of my name to see Detective Flack hurrying to catch up with me.

"Flack," I nodded politely.

"Hey," he nodded back.

I noticed he was fidgeting with his hands, a tell tale sign of nerves or that perhaps something was on his mind.

"Anything I can help you with, Detective?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation to its completion.

"Oh err...no," Flack muttered and then changed his mind. "Yes. I just wondered if you wanted to grab a drink, you're off the clock now, aren't you?"

I stared at Flack in surprise. In awkward surprise. This had never happened before. The two of us never socialised outside work, at least, not unless some of the others were present.

"Is everyone going?" I asked.

Flack scratched the back of his neck and I sensed he was nervous.

"No. Just me and you. I thought...umm..."

Flack looked away and I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. This case had been awkward for the both of us. The mention of embezzlement was always an awkward subject matter for us to broach ever since my friend Brian had been arrested for it when I had been staying on his couch. The look Flack had given me as he's questioned me about my presence in Brian's apartment had left me with no doubt that Flack thought I was involved. I hadn't been, not that I had been entirely truthful either. But it confirmed what I had always known about Flack and our working relationship. The detective didn't trust me. And perhaps that was the real reason why the two of us had never been that close.

"Look, Hawkes," Flack was saying. "You saved my life today. I just wanted to thank you, that's all," he murmured.

"Well count it done then," I replied, smiling before turning and moving away. I had no wish to go out drinking alone with a man who didn't trust me.

"Hey, look...what happened to you back there?" Flack suddenly shouted after me. "It was like you froze or something."

I paused in my step and shut my eyes briefly. In my mind I saw it again, Detective Flack lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, stomach ripped open and intestines and entrails pouring out from the open wound that almost split his body in two.

"Shel, are you okay?"

A voice whispered in my ear and I felt myself being pushed into a chair and a cup shoved into my hands. When I finally found the courage to open my eyes again I was sitting in one of the interrogation rooms, a cup of water in my hands and a very worried looking Detective Flack staring down at me. He was sat on the table across from me, long legs dangling over the edge so that they just skimmed the floor. It amused me to see he was wearing orange and green stripy socks.

"Thanks," I croaked as I raised the cup and gulped down the translucent liquid.

Flack nodded his head. "You gonna tell me what the hell's going on?"

Blunt as always. I guess that's what made him a good detective.

"I..." I sighed and placed the cup on the table beside me. "I was reminded of something... earlier today... that's all."

"Of what?" Flack asked gruffly.

I stared at the maroon shirt he was wearing and blinked. He'd changed once we'd returned to the precinct, having got covered in ketchup after being pushed into the huge vat of it by Grub. Maroon was a colour that normally suited Flack's complexion but not on this day. This day I would have given anything for him to be wearing another colour.

"I thought...I..."

I found myself struggling for words, frowning in frustration as something overtook me and I could no longer speak. My chest constricted and I was reminded of the woman Alice and her difficulty to breathe and talk too.

"What's wrong, Shel?" I heard Flack ask and concern could quite clearly be heard in his voice.

"I..." I closed my eyes and suddenly I was back in another place, far away from the precinct and far away from the city too. Greg was there, my childhood friend, the one who would end up arranging for me to be attacked just to save his father from any shame should information concerning him on Ann Steele's flashdrive become public. David was there as well, my other childhood friend. The three of us had always been the best of friends.

"Where were you?"

I looked up, eyes flashing open and realised I had been talking aloud all this time to Flack whose face was still crossed with a frown.

"We were at summer camp. Out in the wilderness. We must only have been about twelve but our parents thought it would be good for us. It was the only time I ever went."

"What happened, Shel? What aren't you telling me?"

I could tell Flack was worried, I heard it in his voice, saw it in his face and he had good reason to be. I knew I was crying, could feel the slow trickle of heat down one of my cheeks. I'd never cried before at work, I rarely ever did. I had seen so much death in my time as first a doctor, then a medical examiner and now a CSI that I felt I was immune to it all. I felt that the sobbing relatives of the deceased, the revolting cases, the disturbed people... none of that could get to me anymore. I was untouchable. But this... this had happened long before I knew of any of that. It was the moment I became a man.

"It should have been safe. There were Rangers and Camp Leaders everywhere," I reminisced. "David, Greg and I were always so by the book but this day, this day we decided to go off on our own. It was the first time we'd ever rebelled and it felt good. It felt bad."

I smiled as I recalled our happy faces as we had trekked off into the trees. Beyond my gaze Detective Flack waited patiently for me to continue.

"None of us wanted to go canoeing in the lake so it was the perfect opportunity. We wandered about for most of the day; we'd stolen food to take with us and just enjoyed spotting the animals and plants. Laughing and having fun."

Flack's left leg was swinging to and fro under the table and I watched it for a while, mesmerised by the movement until my gaze drifted higher and settled on the detective's abdomen. I knew what lay under that maroon shirt, and not in a medical capacity. Scars from when Flack's stomach and abdomen really had been ripped open. But that was caused by a bomb, not this. Not what I was about to tell him.

"The light was dwindling when we heard it. This awful wailing. It scared the living daylights out of us all."

"What was it?" Flack asked.

"A wild cat. Ferocious. Mean. None of us knew what to do, to freeze or to run. To hide or shout for help."

I choked on my sentence and looked away. Out in the corridor I saw Mac hurry past looking grouchy and tired. Nothing changed there then.

"So what did you do?"

I looked up to see Flack hanging on my every word, wondering what we'd done, what the outcome of my tale would be.

"We ran. Greg first, then me and David last. We knew it was useless but then we came across this tree with low branches. Greg was tall for our age and easily clambered up to the first branch and helped me up too. We reached back down for David but he wasn't as fast as us and as he reached up to us the wildcat snared his legs."

Flack was staring at me pitifully and I knew that look. It was the one I'd seen many times over on his face; a look of deep sympathy and pity he gave to those who needed it on the job. I briefly wondered if there was more to Detective Flack than perhaps I gave him credit for.

"Did he..." Flack paused and licked a tongue over dry lips. "What happened?"

I closed my eyes and fell back into the memory of that dreadful day. I'd sat frozen atop that branch Greg quivering next to me as the wildcat had dragged David back down to the ground. I felt the warm liquid that trickled down my thigh and soaked into my dirty jeans, tears burning down my face as I watched my friend being ripped apart. David's screams of anguish pierced right through to my heart and I wanted to climb down to try and save him but knew it would be useless. Greg clutched onto my arm and looking down I saw that he too had urinated over himself. The cat was playing with David, claws scraping over his chest and the back of his hands that hid his face. Scratches and deep bites sunk into his skinny frame as the flesh was pulled from his body, the cat enjoying the chunks of meat that so easily came free. David's movements had become less and less as the vicious claws tore at his body, slashing his skin to shreds and gulping down the blood that spilt from his gut. The wildcat ripped him in two, left him in a pool of his own blood with his innards hanging out.

I suddenly felt an arm round my shoulders and pushed my face into the comfort that was Flack's sturdy chest. He held me as I cried, not wanting to remember the rest of what had happened that day, how the cat had enjoyed playing and satisfying itself with my friend. How afterwards it had stalked away, clearly satiated and David's dead and staring eyes had looked up at us as we trembled high in the tree. It hadn't been much longer until rescue had arrived.

"Hey," Flack said slowly and looked down at me.

"Earlier on today, I thought you had died," I said earnestly, looking up at Flack. "I thought the same thing had happened to you."

Flack frowned, not understanding until he was suddenly hit with realisation. "The red sauce and the sausages Grub threw at me, it must have triggered a memory in you," he nodded.

"I'm so sorry," I muttered regretfully. "I froze, you might have been killed."

"Shel, you saved my life. That woman was about to do to me what she did to Mick Monk. I would have been crushed," Flack admonished.

"But I froze, I..."

"Shel..."

I looked up into the kindly blue eyes of Flack and faltered in my sentence.

"I trust you, Shel. I knew you had my back... and you did."

I choked on a fresh wave of tears, who knew I had so many in me.

"You trust me?" I repeated slightly stupidly.

"Of course I do," Flack frowned as he stood and cracked his back. "Now how about that drink?"

I paused for a moment, wiping my face down with a hand, all the while wishing my brain would kick into gear. So Flack did trust me after all.

"Yeah," I finally said tiredly. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Great," Flack smiled as he went to the door. "Let me just grab my jacket first."

"You know... it was the reason I became a doctor."

Flack turned to me with the door held open.

"Sitting in that tree watching as my friend died and I was helpless to stop it. I knew I never wanted to experience that again. I knew I wanted to try and save as many people as I could."

Flack hesitated and then came back towards me, placing a sturdy hand on my shoulder.

"Then your friend didn't die in vain, Shel. Just think how many people you've saved because of him. I know I'm one of them."

Finally I felt a smile tug on my lips as I looked up at my friend and colleague, Don Flack. He was right. And I hoped that I would know him for a very long time to come yet.


End file.
